Buyout--A Love Story

by Dev Bentham

  “I heard the shower. Is it over?” he whispered, as if he didn’t want to wake the pain.

  I shrugged. “I think so. Thank you.”

  “Do you want to eat? The kitchen is closed, but I can make you something if you’re hungry.”

  I grimaced. The mention of food twisted my gut.

  “I didn’t think so.” Martim slipped inside the room and closed the door behind him. “Maybe some fresh air? It’s finally not raining.”

  I looked out the window. He was right. Blue sky.

  “Did we explore the ruins of the Lisbon castle when you were here before? No? I’ll show you around.” Martim was still whispering.

  I smiled. “Sightseeing together worked so well the other day.”

  He grinned. “Lisbon is built on not one but seven hills, but none as tall as the Serra de Sintra. And the food is very good—a reward for the walk.”

  “That’s what you said last time.” And after the fight in Sintra, neither one of us had felt like eating pastry. I shook my head. Following him around was a bad idea. But I’d never been able to resist.

  Chapter FIVE

  THE FIRST place Martim took me was to the small gothic church just down the street from the hotel. Inside, the air was cool. I inhaled the scent of mold and incense and stood in the back, taking in the stained glass, the statues of saints, and the praying women kneeling near the front. Martim dropped a coin in a box and lit a candle. I turned away. Watching him pray felt more personal than anything we’d done before.

  In the vestibule, he gestured to a display. The church was raising funds to repair the roof.

  “For twenty euro you can have whatever you want inscribed on a tile and it will be there forever. Like a prayer. I bought one earlier this week.”

  I lost my faith years ago, but as I stared at the tiles, I had the ridiculous idea of paying to put our names on a tile, like carving initials in a tree. I considered Martim. “What’s your inscription?”

  He shook his head, looking vaguely embarrassed. “If I tell you, it might not happen.”

  “Like a birthday wish?” I led him out of the church. “Since when are you religious?”

  “I’m not. Or at least not in the regular way. But I often come here to light a candle for my father.” Martim looked out at the square before us. “It’s my way of saying I am sorry to him.”

  “As I remember it, he was the one who should have apologized.”

  “Perhaps. But I will never be free until I make my peace with him. I must remember that he had his own addictions—women, money, anger. When he died, we had many unresolved issues.” He looked sideways at me. “I was a terrible mess then. My grief and anger spilled over and hurt you. For that I really am sorry.”

  “We did this already.” I held up my hand. “You don’t need to keep apologizing. I wasn’t a saint either.”

  Martim smiled. “Okay. We’ll move on. Let me take you to the castle.”

  I inhaled deeply. Beneath the garbage and diesel and piss that made Lisbon smell like every other city, I imagined I could smell spring. The graffiti-covered walls of the old city gleamed in the afternoon sun. I pushed up the sleeves of my sweater, hungry for the brush of air against my skin.

  Martim raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I was keenly aware of how we’d spent other post-migraine afternoons when I couldn’t think, could only feel. It was a good thing we were out in public. Otherwise who knew what could happen.

  We turned a corner. A concrete stairway loomed ahead of us. I stopped to admire the graffiti.

  “A group of residents got together and decided to beautify the neighborhood. They painted these walls white and invited in the artists.” Martim pointed to the picture of a woman standing on a balcony overseeing the rest of the scene. “This woman watched every day to make sure the painting was done correctly.”

  The scene included musicians, wine, flowers. Lyric, really. “A lot different from Chicago gang signs.”

  “We have those, but not here.” Martim made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the walls all the way up the stairway. “We are very proud of our street art here in the Alfama. It has become our thing.”

  “It’s beautiful.” I looked up the steep stairway. “I’m not up to climbing all seven of your hills today.”

  His brows knit. “Of course. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. We’ll get the tram.”

  WE BOARDED an ancient yellow tram. It was crowded, but Martim managed to find a seat near the back. He insisted that I sit by the window.

  I sank onto the old leather bench. “You’re right, this is better than Sintra, if only because there’s a tram.”

  “Oh, there’s a tram in Sintra. I thought it was better to walk.”

  “There was a tram?” I stared at him.

  He shrugged. “What? It was good exercise.”

  “My thighs hurt for days.”

  He glanced down at my legs, then out the window. “These streets are very narrow. Sometimes it feels like you can touch the buildings on either side.”

  I held on to the dark-wood trim around the half-open window as we lurched around a tight corner. Martim held on to the strap above his head, his thigh and shoulder pressed against mine. I was acutely aware of him and of the fifty other people breathing the same dusty air.

  The road straightened out. Martim dropped the strap. He rubbed his hands across his thighs. I had to force myself to look away, out the window at the ancient Alfama streets. We passed a bakery, an apartment building, and a shop window filled with brightly colored glass roosters.

  Martim touched my arm. I turned toward him. He pointed out the window on the other side of the tram. “There’s the Santa Luzia view point. If you like, we can get off at the castle and stop there on our walk down.”

  “You’re the guide.” I sank back into the seat, inhaling the scent of old wood, other people’s perfume, and Martim. I focused on the warmth of his body next to mine. In my post migraine haze, I couldn’t remember why I was avoiding him. Not when this felt so good.

  Later, after we’d climbed the castle walls and admired the red roofs of Lisbon, first from the courtyard of the castle and then from the vista on our way down, I followed Martim through a confusing maze of narrow streets and stairways until he ducked into a doorway. I stepped inside and was hit by the rich aroma of cooking meat. The place was crowded. People sat around communal tables, big platters and bowls of food in front of them.

  We wound our way around the tables to a vacant spot. I slid into one chair and Martim into another. Our knees touched under the table. Martim paused, took a deep breath, and shifted away. A waiter practically tossed us menus. There wasn’t an English translation. I gave up trying to use my Spanish to decipher the Portuguese menu and told Martim to order whatever he thought I’d like. The other customers were clearly locals, not tourists—there was laughter and loud conversations in Portuguese. I glanced at Martim. We had less than a week before I left.

  I touched his arm. “Do you forgive me?”

  He looked up from the menu. He stared into my eyes for a moment, then lifted a shoulder. “What’s to forgive? It’s your job.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure whether I’d been asking forgiveness for the present or the past, but he was right. A crowded restaurant wasn’t the time or place to pick through the scabs, no matter whether they were old or fresh. But I didn’t know what else to talk about since it was all that was on my fuzzy brain.

  Martim ordered a long list of dishes in quick Portuguese. He turned to me. “Do you want wine? I don’t drink anymore, but you’re welcome to if you like.”

  I shook my head. “Water’s fine.” I’d never been one to drink alone.

  Martim looked relieved, and I wondered how much of a strain not drinking was for someone living in such a wine-soaked culture.

  Before I could ask, he leaned his elbows on the table and asked whether I’d heard from any of our old friends. By the time our food came, we were deep
into a safer form of reminiscing, both of us skittering away whenever the conversation strayed too close to a nerve. The food was amazing, earthy, salty, rich. I ate until my stomach ached when I laughed. Which was a lot.

  Every now and then there are perfect days when everything feels right.

  Too bad they never last.

  MARTIM WAS quiet as we walked back. We reached the stairway that led down to the street in front of the hotel. Halfway down Martim stopped. He stared at the hotel facade.

  I followed his gaze. It looked the same as when we had left.

  “My great-grandfather, the man who bought this hotel, grew up on a pig farm north of Porto. Did I ever tell you that?” His gaze didn’t leave the hotel.

  I took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be an easy a conversation. We both knew that soon I would again need to pore over the books. So far, I hadn’t seen anything there that would let Martim keep the place. I steered us out of the flow of traffic and waited for him to continue.

  Martim leaned back against the concrete wall. “I never met my great-grandfather. He was only sixty when he died. In his lifetime he saw a lot of turmoil. All his brothers died in the Second World War and he lost a son in Angola. Throughout all of that, Portugal went through many changes and yet he made the hotel thrive. Did you know that his son, my grandfather, bought two more while he was in charge? Even though those were also hard economic times.”

  I sat down on the step beside him. I’d heard it before. But I let him go on. It was the least I could do. Even if what was coming next was the hardest part. We’d spent so many late nights talking about Martim’s father’s mismanagement, his debts, and how when Martim returned to Lisbon with a business degree from Harvard, his father would need to listen to him. He would save the family business, no matter what. Except that’s not how it all went down.

  “Your father’s mistakes aren’t your fault.” I leaned back, propping myself on my elbows on the step behind so that I could see him more clearly.

  “I know that.” He glanced down, a sad smile on his face. “But I am to blame for my own. I should have come back here and helped Tia Bel straighten things out. Instead I disappeared for almost a decade, leaving her to struggle with management of the hotel on her own.”

  That long? What would have happened if I’d stuck by him? Could I have helped him pull through? I shook my head. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t the savior type.

  He pushed away from the wall and sank down onto the stair below me. “Do you remember how we used to speculate on my father’s debts? Papà’s finances were even worse than we thought. It’s a wonder Tia Bel was able to keep this place back then.”

  “I’m sorry, Martim. I really am.”

  “This is not yours to feel sorry about. Papà, Tia Bel, me, mostly me… that’s where the blame lies.” He patted my foot. “For now, it’s still my hotel. Let’s raid the kitchen to see if there are any pastries left.”

  I groaned. “I’m still stuffed from lunch.”

  “Then I’ll make you a coffee while I eat.” He stood and held out his hand to me. “Come on. In another week I will be just another unemployed Lisboan. Let me treat you while I can.”

  His grip was firm and warm. I let him help me up. We stood for a few moments holding hands.

  Martim sighed. He dropped my hand. I followed him into the hotel. I should have been relieved. He’d let me off the hook for the whole fiasco. And yet, as I walked into the cool hotel lobby, I was even more determined to find a way to keep Rex away from the Sabido hotel. I had no idea how I was going to do that and still keep my crappy, overpaid job.

  Martim led the way into the kitchen. I didn’t have room in my stomach for pastry or even coffee, but as I watched the way his muscles moved underneath his white shirt and the way his jeans hugged his shape, I realized just how hungry I really was.

  THE HOTEL kitchen was small but large enough that it had once supported a full meal service. These days it closed in late morning, after the breakfast and midmorning coffee crowds were gone. By late afternoon, the empty room smelled of disinfectant, and the long stainless steel counters gleamed.

  Martim waved expansively to encompass the entire room. “I had been thinking of expanding our food offerings, maybe instituting a cocktail happy hour. As it is, we barely sell enough liquor to keep the bar open. Now I guess that will be your boss’s headache.”

  The only improvements Rex would institute would be the ones that came cheap and guaranteed a high rate of return when he flipped the property. He’d have it on the market again within weeks.

  “I estimate we could recover the money in six months, maybe a year. But your boss has to make some changes to make that happen.” Martim opened the giant refrigerator door and peered in. In a moment he pulled out a plate of hand-sized puff pastry drizzled in chocolate. “These won’t last. When they sit too long, the custard makes them soggy. Are you sure you don’t want one?”

  I shook my head. “You sound cheerful all of a sudden.”

  He paused, a pastry halfway to his mouth. “Do I? I think maybe I’m relieved. Your loan repayment deadline has been hanging over my head. But today I realized there is no way I can get you the money. That’s sad. But I can tell you about all the changes I wanted to make, and maybe, if you put them in your report, the hotel will benefit in the long run.”

  “Sure.” I didn’t have the heart to burst his bubble. And there was always the chance Rex would listen. Nothing was impossible.

  He grinned. “Okay. We’ll take these over to my apartment. I’ll make coffee, and I will tell you everything. Then I’ll leave the rest up to God or the universe or chance or whoever is in charge.”

  In that moment, he looked so much like himself at twenty that I had to look away. No doubt about it, we were days away from breaking each other’s hearts.

  Chapter SIX

  “YOU HAVE an apartment?” As soon as I asked it, I realized it was a stupid question. Of course he had an apartment.

  “What did you think? That I live here?” Martim held open the back door, balancing the pastry plate like a waiter at a fancy restaurant. “Maybe in a squalid room off the kitchen?”

  I shrugged. It wasn’t that far from how I’d been picturing him.

  Martim laughed. “I’ve thought of it. I even did a cost benefit analysis. In the end, it’s cheaper for me to keep my own place. Which was a relief. I don’t think I could take being at the hotel twenty-four hours a day. Don’t worry. You won’t be kicking me out onto the street.”

  Again. “And Tia Bel? Does she have her own place?”

  He shook his head. “You are so American sometimes. Tia Bel is family. Why would we need two homes?”

  He turned up a corner. I followed him onto a narrow cobblestone street that led nearly straight uphill. It was more like an alley than a street, only a block long, lined with four- and five-story stucco houses with laundry hanging from wrought-iron balconies.

  “This is us.” Martim pointed to the shortest building in the row, a sun-yellow three-story box with a characteristically Lisboan red tile roof. “My father bought it years ago.”

  “It’s huge.” Evidently not only did Martim live away from the hotel, his house was multistoried.

  He glanced at me and rolled his eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. You think we’re not already doing everything we can to make ends meet? There is a great view from those top windows, but I can’t show you that because we rent out all but the first floor.”

  I looked up at the upper apartments, each with glass doors that opened onto a balcony. “You must get good money from those rentals.”

  “What do you think Tia Bel and I live on? Everything we get from the hotel goes back into the business.” He slid a key into the wooden front door. “So now you know we’ll be fine, even without the hotel. You can stop feeling guilty.”

  The foyer was dark and smelled of furniture polish. The wooden floor and stairway gleamed. Martim opened another doorway and we stepped into a dar
kened living room. He hit the lights, illuminating a room that could only have been decorated by Tia Bel. The furniture was draped in rich fabrics. Modern prints hung on the walls. And lavender permeated the air. A narrow hallway led from the living room to a small kitchen.

  Martim set the pastries on the kitchen counter and started the elaborate process of making coffee in a stovetop espresso pot. He gestured toward a hallway that led farther into the apartment. “I have an office in the back. Go ahead. I’ll bring coffee in a minute.”

  The first door off the hallway was open. A bed covered in decorative pillows filled more than half the room. The rest was taken up by a dressing table cluttered with cosmetic bottles of one form or another. I kept going down the hall. Next was a white-tiled bathroom. Two rooms flanked the end of the hallway. On the right was a closet-sized space with file cabinets, a desk, and single straight-backed chair. Martim’s office. A window high in the wall let in some light, but I couldn’t help thinking it looked like a cell.

  On the other side of the hallway, I saw Martim’s neatly made bed through the cracked open door. I had no right to look into his private space. With one finger I edged open the door. I stepped inside, drawn by the tacky zebra-striped throw folded on the end of the bed. The last time I’d seen that blanket, it had been wrapped around a shivering Martim who was begging me not to make him go. I caressed the cheap fleece. It was soft under my hand.

  The floorboard creaked, and I spun around, embarrassed to be caught like that. Martim stood in the hallway, holding a tray with coffee cups and pastries.

  He looked at my hand on the blanket.

  “I can’t believe you still have this.” I held up the fleece.

  “Somewhere along the way I lost the real one, the one you gave me for my birthday.” His gaze drifted from my hand on the blanket to my eyes. “I ordered this one while I was in treatment.”